by Kevin Jaeger, Players' Representative

29th January 2009

"I've got buddies who died face down in the muck so you and I could enjoy this family restaurant!...I'm finishing my coffee."

Everyone has either seen or been a part of a situation like that. A situation where the trigger is really minor, but somehow it balloons quickly and before you know it, the situation is rapidly out of hand. In those situations, a mob can form...and no matter how small or minor the stature of any individual, strength in numbers carries the day.

We've seen something similiar in the history of Second Edition: the so called "weenie deck." It's a deck loaded with low costers that gang up on dilemmas and power their way through, often relying on support cards that boost attributes or add skills. Subsequently, though, we saw an effort to try and make lower-cost personnel less worth playing and higher-cost personnel more worth playing. An evolution was started that continues through today, where people build decks that try and strike a balance between the big, beefy Hoss's that up your deck's sheer power and the smaller, more versatile peeps that keep your cost curve down and your deck speed up.

That effort to strike balance continues today. However, the reality is that decks are still more weighted to the lighter side of the cost scale. I believe that this is simply because you can't rely on your cost-reduction methods to always be there for you and because players often want to have counters readily available for drawing support cards they need for accomplishing varying goals such as dilemma busting, capture, "assimilation" and battle. After all, you aren't going to win if you can't either (1) move faster than your opponent, or (2) control the board.

Contrary to what it appears like at first blush, I don't believe Miner Revolt is designed to punish weenie decks. Instead, I believe that Miner Revolt is simply more about encouraging higher-cost personnel. This dilemma is going to stop your personnel (barring stop prevention), the only question is how many. Assuming you and your opponent are both using this dilemma, the likelihood is that whoever has the higher percentage of low-cost peeps is going to have more get stopped. One stop can be the difference between who wins and who loses. Get a key personnel stopped and you might not get past that nasty wall that's coming up. That costs you a turn, and a turn is often the difference between a full win and a full loss.

Miner revolt isn't going to be some game-breaking card. You are not going to see it in every dilemma pile. Heck, it probably will only end up once in the piles it does get put into. However, what it is going to do is stop:

1. Three two-costers
2. A four-coster and two one-costers
3. A three-coster, a two-coster and a one-coster
4. Four one-costers and a two-coster

You get the point. To put it another way, your opponent is going to need to pick at least two three-costers for you not to get three people stopped. Yeah, you might get lucky by him picking a four-cost dude and a two-cost dude. But I wouldn't want to bet my game on it.

So use Miner Revolt and get in your weenie opponent's face. Say "I don't like you using Original Series Federation and playing with Coordinated Counterattack, you jerk!" Say "Go ahead and use Cadets. You're gonna pay dearly!"